#i was in... sixth or seventh grade at the time? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

stmulnts-a · 1 year

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@gvesnofux : // maybe not a situation per se, but tweek's thoughts on him and craig breaking up after their fake-break-up in tweek x craig, between stick of truth and the fractured but whole, and the one i mention in my bio here between sixth and seventh grade? how do you feel them getting back together went in tweek's head each time?

i think it’s safe to assume you’re referring to the fake break up??? if that’s not what you meant lemme know lol.

but when it comes to that, i mean i’ve mentioned before that i headcanon that tweek’s kinda liked craig since not too long after the boys made them fight (partially one of those “whoa he’s on my level” kinda things considering they were about equally matched, partially just...thinking about him a lot whoops lmao), so the whole fake breakup made him kinda realize some things (mostly more-than-platonic things lol). especially with what tweek said afterwards, that he’d never felt that confident, he was never able to do that before, all that jazz. so, yknow, craig shows up on the sidewalk and just silently offers his hand? “oh god oh fuck i didnt actually fuck up? holy shit? we’re holding hands? i am never letting go 🥺💚”

as far as stick of truth goes, my memory’s complete ass, that was after they broke up bc of the whole superhero franchise thing right? i honestly don’t remember a lot from sot or the episodes leading up to it ;; BUT. considering it’s tweek and considering he’s a barbarian, i can imagine there was a lot of taking out his anxiety via hitting things and putting on either an angry or neutral front, i.e. pretending to still be mad about the whole superhero franchise thing, or trying to pretend he didn’t actually care (but he did care and after switching to a fantasy setting he wasn’t all that mad about the franchise thing anymore)

whiiiich leads to the fractured but whole, where he was mad about the franchise thing again. though really i think it was a tiny bit of a cover. i honestly kinda think the deeper issue was that cartman was basically being allowed to call the shots, and tweek not only felt like he was being ‘excluded’ by cartman putting off his “movies”, but that craig was just letting cartman exclude him. he thought that if he managed to stand up for himself and call cartman out that the boy he holds hands with would catch on and agree, and after he walked out without craig he thought he was completely wrong about him entirely (as in, not just over this one little thing - he’s like ten and strung out, of course he thinks in extremes). honestly i could imagine tweek willingly sitting out until New Kid gets their mission during TFBW, and only really participating to 1) see craig again and 2) basically let himself be mad about the superhero split again. regarding the whole bit in the game with the couples counseling, frankly i think tweek put the franchise bullshit aside not too long before the session and was being mad at first to give the same energy he thought he was getting from craig. that whole fight? with the two of them lowkey taking care of each other in their own lil ways? yeah that’s for sure when that last little bit of anxiety/anger over craig dissipated.

okay, okay, that one from sixth-seventh grade. being tweens at the start of puberty, oh jesus christ emotions. tweek’s anxiety got worse, and he could tell that craig was more distant, and trying to hold everything together while dealing with his own anxiety (on top of school and his parents and his “coffee” addiction) was just...adding more anxiety to his already-mountain of anxiety. he thought they were doing ok until seemingly “out of the blue” being broken up with, hell he’d thought about how they’d manage high school schedules and even thought about colleges that had majors for both of their interests. (chill out bro ur like 12) tweek stopped going to book club for the rest of the school year, he stopped playing a lot of his video games, his grades dropped slightly (y’know, Bs to Cs, not that bad), his ability to socialize went down, and his coffee consumption went up. summer break helped a little bit, since he could just hang out on his own and just not deal with people all that much (because cmon you KNOW the entire town would still be mourning the loss of creek -_-). that summer was also the first time he snuck out onto the roof of his house, just so he wouldn’t have to overhear his parents talk about him. (it wouldn’t be until after he n craig get back together when he actually leaves the property when he sneaks out lol) going back to school was...barely much better than the end of sixth grade. schoolwork felt overwhelming, some of the book club members “hounded him” (asked him what happened like one whole time) about the end of last school year, AND he had to see craig in the hallways. anxiety sucked the soul out of him. but the novel for book club had absolutely nothing to do with romance or dating, so he could bring himself to go to those meetings again, reconnecting with them definitely made him feel like he had actual friends again (uh duh bc they were actual friends. anxious lil dipshit). staying at school longer every day meant significantly less tweak bros coffee during the week, which in turn lessened his anxiety if only a little bit, gee i fucking wonder why. tweek was absolutely in fucking shock that he could even hold a conversation with craig without arguing the first time they talked again, doesn’t even matter who approached who first. but tweek definitely went home and had a nervous breakdown in his room because “oh god what if he doesnt like me anymore even worse what if its always been one sided fuck fuck shit fuck.” and it’s like that for like a week or two, until he’s okay with the fact that “maybe craig just wants to be friends, that fucking sucks a lot but dammit i don’t wanna not talk/hang out with him,” but suddenly they’re holding hands again? at some point? there’s a whole anxiety-riddled apology in there somewhere, where tweek just stumbles out an “im sorry” over being way too anxious and high-strung and what have you and sorry about being the way he was and that he didn’t mean to drive craig away but intention isnt everything blah blah blah “just make me shut up please god im not gonna stop.” it doesnt matter when it happens in the timeline but it definitely happened. honestly tweek doesn’t even believe they’re together again until craig verbally confirms that, yeah, they’re together again. and he definitely broke out the anxious-happy hide-face-and-whine bit lol, maybe a bit of (light) cry-laughing and a joking “thank god, my parents have been giving me hell all summer” followed by a genuine “i missed being with you”

#// this got LONG AS FUCK have fun with this wholeass fanfic /j #// the fact that the sixth-seventh grade bit is THE LONGEST i cant stand this fucker. i cant stand him #// theres just So Much Time To Play With and i had to play with all of it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯#gvesnofux #⌜too much pressure⌟ °﹂⋯﹁。inbox #⌜haven’t slept in days⌟ °﹂⋯﹁。headcanon #⌜you changed something in me⌟ °﹂⋯﹁。&//craig || gvesnofux

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le-velo-pour-dru · 11 months

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Sorry I'm just thinking about that drawing of Sunspot I did, and it got me thinking about Ready Jet Go!... I'm gonna see if I still remember all the words to the theme song

Okay, here goes:

Jet Propulsion, that's his name

Jet Propulsion, he'll rocket to fame

When he arrived, he created a buzz, cause

There was no house, and then there was

He said, "People of Earth, you ain't seen nothin' yet!

I'm from Bortron-7, and my name is Jet!"

Jet Propulsion, that's his name

He looks like us, but he isn't the same

I'm a, a space-tripper and a galaxy crosser!

My parents brought me here in a flying saucer!

And just to prove it was a fact, he flew them out to space and back!

Jet Propulsion!

Jeeeet Prooopuuuulsioooon! (Ready, Jet, go!)

He showed up, and now it's a blast!

Looks like the future really got here fast!

Nice to meet ya, human race! Tell me all about the place!

Jet Propulsion! Jet Propulsion! Jet Propulsion!!! READY, JET, GO!

(Okay I'm gonna be honest I DIDN'T THINK I'D REMEMBER THE WHOLE THING FDHHFXGJCHJCG- It took some effort, and I did forget a few of the lines at the end for a while, BUT THEY CAME BACK TO ME!! 🤣)

#dru speaks #ok for context #from kindergarten up until eighth grade i watched pbs kids every school morning #and during at least my sixth grade and seventh grade year if not also my fifth grade year‚ ready jet go was one of the shows that would come #on while i got ready in the morning #so i used to watch it like every school day for two or three years X3 #(and no shade to pbs kids btw. the only reason we stopped doing that is because i did eighth grade completely from home and by the time i #was back in a normal school building‚ it just wasn't a habit anymore. but i'd be totally happy if one day we just started doing it again #those shows are fun X3 oh man ESPECIALLY if they play odd squad. LOVE odd squad 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏)

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childofthestars111 · 3 months

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I got into an argument with somone today, so I'm using tumblr to show the people's choice

#tumblr polls #polls #random polls #middle school #nostalgia #in a fucked up kinda way because who misses middle school

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strangersteddierthings · 6 months

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Childhood friends AU Idea

Steve and Eddie are best friends who make plans to learn the elvish alphabet from The Hobbit so that they can pass notes without worrying about other people reading them.

The end of the school year (Eddie in 6th, Steve in 5th) brings a sadness to the two. Eddie's going to middle school and Steve's not yet, but they can hang out on weekends, and they have all summer so no worries. (Also, it gives Steve a little more time to learn elvish, since it'll be a whole year until they're in the same school again.)

Except yes worries because two weeks into summer, Eddie vanishes. When Steve bikes to his house to investigate, the whole house is empty. Packed up and gone. Steve goes to Wayne for answer and all he gets is a smile that doesn't really reassure and words of "his dad got a job opportunity, had to move on short notice. But don't worry, kiddo. I'll get you the number to their new place so you can call."

He learns elvish anyway. It's harder without Eddie to help but he's determined. Eddie might return, or maybe he'll get an address one day. Send a letter to Eddie in full Elvish.

Steve never gets a number or address. Summer ends and sixth grade comes. He doesn't want to forget all the elvish he's learned, just in case. So, he decides to keep a journal. He can write all about everything that's happening and when he sees Eddie, he can give it to him. It's a double win. Eddie will know everything he's missed out on AND it'll help Steve practice elvish.

Sixth grade ends. Eddie doesn't return. Steve did make friends with Carol Perkins though, so he's not as lonely. He hopes Eddie made a new friend, too. But not a new best friend. That's Steve's position, always.

Seventh grade brings Tommy Hagan, but still no Eddie. It brings a growth spurt and sports. Steve likes the easy camaraderie that comes with sports teams. It's like having a lot of friends, which Steve will only admit to needing in his journal. Needing many little connections of friendship to hold together the big hole Eddie left behind.

The summer between seventh and eighth grade brings him a Bruce Springsteen concert. He'd never thought of a boy kissing another boy until he'd witnessed it on stage but he thinks about it a lot after. The end of that summer brings an awaken he refuses to shy away from even if he has to hide it

Eighth grade brings popularity. Steve's good looking, rich, and liked among his peers. It brings the first (and last) time his dad says he's proud of him.

(Steve will spend the rest of his high school career chasing his father's approval.)

Freshman year brings Eddie back, but he's different. His hair is longer and his clothes are darker and he's distant. Defiant and angry. Steve would recognize him anywhere, dressed in anyway.

Eddie doesn't want his friendship anymore. Avoids him in the halls and cafeteria, but Steve is nothing if not persistent. He writes a full letter in elvish to slip into Eddie's locker, but Eddie catches him. Shoves the letter back, unopened, unread, with a harsh whispered, "Don't you get it Harrington? I don't want to be your friend. Fuck off."

Steve doesn't understand why. Not until the table top rants start. Conformity and jocks and brain-dead rich kids who get by on favoritism.

It hurts. Steve feels his heart break the day he finally gets the not-so-subtle messages drilled into his mind. Eddie hates sports, and rich people, and stupid people. Eddie hates all the things that Steve is.

Eddie hates him.

Sophomore year brings Steve a lot of things. It brings the acknowledgment that he was probably in love with Eddie, the way his heart twists the day he sees Eddie flirting with a girl in the hallway, the way he wants the lights out when hooking up with someone so he can imagine a different person pressed against him, the way he gravitates towards brunettes with brown eyes and the flickering hope it might make Eddie jealous. (The way he'd said the wrong name when Brent went down on him, too absorbed in the fantasy of someone else to get it right. Brent hadn't been offended by it, he'd been thinking of someone else, too. Steve finds solidarity for a little bit, until the school year ends and Brent leaves Hawkins.)

Junior year turns Steve's life upside down (pun intended) with monster's coming out of walls. There's probably a lot more he should write about but his journal's pretty empty this year. Too traumatized to document. (Too afraid of what Eddie would say because Steve still writes in his journal like he plans on sending it to Eddie one day. Better to write nothing than sound crazy.)

And halfway through his senior year (don't think about how he's in it with Eddie, about the 4 classes they share, about how Eddie still won't meet his eye) he wants to fade into the background. Nancy and he break up. She's with Jonathan and he hears the whispers of how pathetic he is to be eating lunch with his ex and the guy that 'stole' her. Steve knows that's a lie, Nancy made her choice, and no one can say otherwise, but it hurts to hear. He can't be bothered to try and make new friends. How would he explain the nightmares? The skittishness. The fear of the dark, of pumpkin patches, of his own damn pool now that he's had time to process last year?

Then, the next year brings him Robin. Well. First it brings him an embarrassing uniform and then Russian torture (don't think about it. Don't think about how he'll shorthand the stock list by writing it in Elvish sometimes. Don't think about how the Russian's almost believe they just work for Scoops until they find the stock list in his pocket. Don't think about how they don't believe that the strange script they can't identify isn't proof he's a spy), but in the end he gets Robin. A Platonic Soulmate who understands the hidden side of him. She asked if he was ever in love, and he thinks of the Eddie he used to know, longs to know again, and describes her instead. She rejects him in the softest way possible and then confesses about Tammy, and he confesses about Eddie in turn.

1986 brings Eddie back into his life in the worst way possible. With a bottle to his neck and them both acting like they've never spoken before. It brings twisting guts as Steve lies awake thinking about Eddie alone in a boathouse instead of sharing a bed with him like they used to in elementary school. It brings Steve leading them to Skull Rock (popularized as a make out spot but started as a set of boys' favorite place to play pirates during the summer). Dustin and Eddie make references Steve pretends to not know, despite his own copies of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and the numerous amounts of notebooks turned journals with elvish scrawled throughout.

There's a trek through the Upside Down. In another universe, Steve imagines he and Eddie talk. In this one, Robin sticks to his side like an extension of him (which she is), and glares at Eddie every time he looks in Steve's direction. Robin knows everything, knows it all, because there are no secrets between them.

They make plans to stop Vecna, once and for all, and Robin confesses she has a fear. That it won't turn out okay this time, but they have to try anyway. Steve clinks his bottle against hers and looks across the field to Eddie and Dustin. The stakes feel so much higher this time.

"I'm going to talk to Eddie if we survive. Make it right," he says.

"No. He's going to make it right because you didn't do anything wrong," Robin says, which is more support than he thought he'd get given the grudge she holds in his favor.

Eddie said make him pay and Steve does. Nancy advances, shotgun shot after shot and Steve's bounding down the stairs. Vecna beats him to the ground floor but not by much.

A hatchet's not the best tool to remove a head with but he manages. When he looks up, Nancy and Robin are looking down, both approving.

They find Dustin sobbing over Eddie and- and-

Steve's certain he's broken several of Eddie's ribs but he's breathing again, Nancy finds his pulse beneath all the blood, and Robin's retrieved the cut sheets to make bandages out of. Nothing is clean in this world, infection could kill him later, he might not save Eddie like he wants, but fucking Christ, at least if death claims him, it'll be on the right side of the world in a hospital.

Dustin, Robin, and Steve are at Eddie's side when Nancy leads Wayne into the room. They knew she went out looking for him (Steve was going to but Nancy had shoved him back in the chair with a look that left no room for argument) but even so they're startled by him.

Wayne has always been stoic and reserved, so it's no surprise to Steve when he just lets out a low whistle and says, "of all the people I might see here, you weren't one of 'em."

Steve swallows thickly and says, "well. I am. Here, I mean."

And Wayne gives him a watery smile and crosses the room. Pulls Steve into a hug that Steve thinks he probably wants to give to Eddie instead, but Eddie's not awake and standing and Steve is. But then Wayne says, "I told Eddie he couldn' chase ya away. That if he just talked to ya, you'd understand. He tried so hard to make ya hate him, and for what? For ya to be at his bedside anyway."

And Steve sobs. Loud and ugly and suddenly Dustin's there, and so are Robin and Nancy, and it's probably the most awkward hug for all the others but it's the best hug Steve's had in years. He doesn't even care that he's crying because how can he? Wayne's all but confirmed that Eddie doesn't hate him, maybe never hated him. That Eddie has an explanation, a reason for it all, and all he wants is Eddie to wake up and tell him.

Steve finally gets his apology two days after Eddie's release. It's the first time they've been alone together since- well, since elementary school. Wayne drove him here then lied about needing to check on something and said he'd be back in an hour or so before abandoned them to the awkward silence in Steve's living room.

"I'm sorry, Steve!" Eddie blurts out loudly, then looks startled by his own yelling.

"I know. I forgive you."

"You shouldn't."

"I know. Still do anyway. Would like to know what happened, though."

And Eddie tells him. How his father's debts came calling and they ran. How his mom got sick real fast, and his father's crime spree and prison sentence following her passing. How Eddie discovered the same thing about himself that Steve did but didn't have the same acceptance of himself. Hated that another thing marked him as Other. Freak.

He tells Steve how he couldn't let Steve back in because he was afraid of losing him again if he ever learned.

"I didn't think you'd be okay being friends with a faggot," Eddie spits the word out, dirty and mean and directed at himself.

Steve makes a decision then. "Follow me." And he helps Eddie up the stairs and into his room. Eddie sits on the bed and watches as Steve digs out notebook after notebook after notebook, until they're a tower on his bed. Then he topples them over in his search for the first.

Eddie takes the offered notebook with confusion on his face, looking from the cover, where 1978 is written on it. The summer Eddie vanished from Steve's life.

"Open it."

Eddie does and gasps. "Steve. Is this-"

"Every single one of these notebooks was written to you. For you. About you. I read The Hobbit for you. The Lord of the Rings. I learned elvish for you. I think I've been a little bit in love with you since the day we met on the playground on my second day of first grade."

"Steve," it comes out breathless and awed.

"Eddie," Steve repeats back to him, just as breathless as Eddie tosses the notebook aside and reaches for Steve instead. Hauls him in to kiss him senseless amongst the proof of Steve's devotion.

#steddie #fic #this was supposed to be a paragraph or two #why am i like this #steve has a complicated relationship with his parents #but they arent terrible #the picture descriptions have translation for the elvish if you wanna know what Steves been writing in his journals

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whore-ibly-hot · 5 months

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Best friend!Retro-gamer!Yandere x Fem! Or Transmasc!Reader

"My Player Two"

18+ Minors DNI

Warnings: Dub-con, perverted thoughts, obsession, bullying, masturbation, cum play, begging, general perversion, dry-humping.

(AN: Merry early xmas or equivalent holiday, guys! I have given you all the present of rising from the grave to deliver some submissive yandere horny thoughts.)

A gentle tug shakes you out of your thoughts, making you sit up quickly and turn your attention to your friend, Lewis.

The curly haired brunettes tongue just barely pokes out between his lips, thick coke-bottle glasses slipping off his nose. He's trying his best to play his video game, whilst also keeping one hand on your shoulder. "Hey, I asked you somethin'!" He says, not glancing away from the screen.

"Sorry, just zoned out. Whatcha need?" You tilt your head and adjust your posture when he puts the hand from your shoulder back onto his controller.

"I was telling you that I think I'm real close to beating my Galaga score at the arcade on 54th. Real close to getting my initials up on that screen."

"That's great, Lewis. I'm glad all that practicing with your hands is paying off." He blushes at the encenuation. "You know, if you'd like you could come and see me, when I get that high score. It'd be pretty great." He grabs an old plastic cup by the side of his bed, handing it to you with a shake.

"I've even got a few coins for you, if you want them. Maybe we could play a couple rounds side-by-side, or I could use them, and get you a slushie or something from the prize counter." He looks at you hopefully, with large eyes. You giggle, and reach out to adjust his glasses, pushing them back up his nose. "Sure, Lewis. I can bring my own coins though how much you covet those coins." He chuckles.

The clock chimes 9:00 and your head whips over to see the time. "Oh, geez. I gotta get out of here, Lewis, I've got classes in the morning." He pouts a little, trying to think of a reason to get you to stay a little longer.

"Hey, maybe you could sleep over, just borrow one of my shirts. I'd hate to make you go home, plus I've got food here." He stands. You shake your head as you fumble around for your stuff.

"I can't Lewis, thanks though, I'll see you soon, okay? Uh, call me when you plan to go to the arcade, alright."

"Okay, goodnight then, Y/N..." he watches wistfully as you leave, trying to resist the urge to pull you back for just a few more minutes. He'd give you soda, or some more snacks. Lewis is hesitant to let anyone touch his controllers, but if you wanna play two player, he'll allow it, you'd just have to promise to be gentle. He knows you would be though, your always so gentle. With him, with animals and other people, (though he wishes it was him mostly.).

Lewis has never been popular at your school, it was bad in elementary, and only got worse when the social politics of high school kicked in. He was scrawny, freckled, and loved anything geeky. He was bad at sports and an only child, making him a little socially inept. He didn't care though, he may had wanted someone in elementary to play with, or in sixth and seventh grade to be his friend, but by eight grade year, it didn't matter. That's when he met you. Sweet, perfect you.

You were immediately popular at school. You were friendly, attractive, and outgoing, everything he tried and failed to be. Becoming your friend changed everything for him. He was still bullied and picked on, but it didn't matter. As long as you saw him as worthy, he was happy. His parents even stopped goading him about going out more, once they saw he actually had a friend, which just led him to have more time to stay indoors, with you and his consoles.

He lays on his bed thinking about how much you've meant to him, having set his controller aside, when he realizes the scent of your shampoo is still lingering on his pillow. You smell so good, and there's still a warm patch from where your laying.

"No... fuck." He whines, feeling his cock twitch to life from under his jeans. He runs a hand through his hair, fighting shame and carnal need. He quickly pokes his head around his blinds, making sure his parents aren't home yet. After deciding the coast is clear, He locks his door and gets under his bed, digging around for his book. Eventually, he finds the family photo fromthe christmas card your family sent his last december, just a couple months ago. He feels so dirty for jerking it to your family photo, especially considering your other family members pictures are on the page, but all the cute Polaroid pictures he has of the pair of you are still developing, and he really needs to look at you right now.

Normally, he'd just just turn on the adult late night channels, but he heard from some of the guys at school that usage of those channels are starting to reflect on cables bills, and he'd rather not get his TV taken.

In a moment of desperation, he kisses your photo once, before taping it up to his headboard, and grabbing the nearest pillow. Even though it's not you, and his cock desperately needs to be free from his jeans, he wants to make it romantic. He straddles the pillow, pretending in his head that this isnt weird at all, it's just.... practice for if, no, when he convinces you that he can provide reasons for you to love him.

"Y/N..." he huffs, looking down at the pillow and trying not to think about how embarrassing he's being. "I like you so much, I do, and I need-" he rolls his hips. "I need to be in you, I do." He tries to imagine what you might say.

"I know, i-its my first time too, but it'll be really good. I'll make sure I make you feel good, and I'll go really slow, even if I want to speed up." He begins undoing his pants. "You know, you thought you were being funny, making that dirty joke about practicing with my hands, but I bet some of that dexterity might carry over?" He chuckles, before groaning as he kicks off his boxers. "Stupid, that was stupid. Don't say that when this is a sure thing."

He looks down at his freckled dick, the tip red and leaking, slightly bulbous. He's pretty thin, but a decent length. He's sure if he figured out the right way to use it, he'd make you feel amazing. He's know you'll make him feel amazing.

"I'm gonna put it in now, okay? Y-yeah, yeah I'll go slow. Of course, I wouldn't hurt you or anything, unless you wanted that. I'd do anything for you." He groans, before rubbing his tip against the pillow and pumping his hips slowly. He pants, glasses fogging up.

"S' really good, not just on my dick but... but having you up against me, feels so nice to hold you." He clutches the pillow like a life preserver while he ruts away into it, whispering and panting praises and assurances to it.

"Gonna cum, god, I-I feel it coming. I wanna be a good guy, and pull it out but-" He moans. "You feel so good, I can't." He imagines in his head your on the pill, maybe for cramps, but... maybe just for him. "I-I can cum inside you? Really? Go's, yeah, yeah. Okay, I'll do that. I'll give it to you, and I'll clean you up right after I- shit." He can feel himself losing control at the thought of ruining you, the sight of his cum leaking out of your holes. He moans loudly, though it choked back and emotional enough it sounds like more of a cry. Thick, white cum comes out in strings, all across the crisp white fabric of his pillowcase.

Once that post-nut clarity hits, he groans. How could he be so stupid? This pillow had to be cleaned now, and that would wash out all the remnants of your scent. He sighs as he chucks the pillow case into his laundry basket, and tucks his spent cock back into his jeans. Wiping off his fogged up glasses, he looks at the photo of you again, taking it down from his bedframe. He leans back against the headboard as he looks at it.

"M'so in love with you, I wish I had the guts to say it. I play the hero all day, everyday in my games, why can't I just be like them. Strong enough to get the girl, and keep her. Not jerk off to a pillow and a family photo." He tucks it back under his bed. He'll impress you, he's just gotta find a way.

Several days later, you got a call from Lewis to meet him at the arcade. Grabbing your keys, you head out.

Upon arriving, you enter, and see Galaga. Huh, Lewis's initials were already on the leaderboard! He must've won before you showed up. Heading outside, you hear grunting from an alleyway. Concerned, you peek around the corner, and gasp.

"Hey!" You yell, running up. The two punks who were standing over your battered friend turn there heads, only to snicker. It's two boys from you and Lewis's class.

"Oh, Y/N, perfect timing. This geek was getting taught a lesson." The jock snickers.

"What is your problem? He didn't do anything to you guys!" You push past them to try and help Lewis up, but he looks mortified to see you. "N-no, no Y/N, don't-"

"Yeah, he didn't do anything to us, it's about what he did to you, or maybe, what you did to him." You turn around, and Lewis pales. "What're you talking about?" Your brows furrow.

"This geek has been in that shitty arcade all day, playing that game. When he beat his high score, he started dancing like a little girl. We laughed at him, and he started going off. Yelling about how he didn't need our approval, and he wasn't upset. He had something we couldn't take from him. We asked him, and he said it was you." You tilt your head.

"Yeah, man. We knew this creep had been following you around for a while, but we didn't know he thought you were friends. We said we didn't believe him, and he got so upset he started claiming he was your friend, that you loved each other. Even, heh-" The two laugh. "Even that he fucked you."

"W-what?" You gasp and look at him. "Lewis?"

"I'm so sorry, I... I needed them to believe we were close, that you did care." He blubbers, reaching our weakly to your blurry form, glasses broken.

"He got graphic with it, too. Talked about condoms and taking you from behind up in his bed, since it isn't true, the little perverts been fantasizing about it for a while. If nothing else, we did you a public service, shutting this creeps mouth." The taller jock says, trying to put a hand on your shoulder.

"Don't touch them!" Lewis screeches, blindly lashing out, weakness replaced by a moment of fury. "Jesus, he's crazier than we thought. Need us to walk you home?" The jock winks. You shake your head vehemently.

"Just go." You say coldly, not turning to face them. "Whatever, bitch. Don't blame us if this sicko does something to you." Only you and Lewis are left in the alley now.

"Y/N..."

"Don't, Lewis." You snap, making him recoil into himself. "I trusted you, you were my friend, h-how could you say such lewd things about me?" You ask.

"I-I didn't meant them to be leed, I was just angry. I mean, I would like to do that stuff with you, but it'd be romantic! I'd never try and defile you or something shitty like that. Just please, can we go back inside?" He begs. "I'll get you that slushie like I promised!"

You shake your head. "I... I need some time to process all this, Lewis. I think it's best if we don't see each other for a bit." His face falls. Despite what's happened, you almost regret what you said. He looks broken.

He kneels before you, on the ground. "Y/N, no, please. Your my only friend, my best friend, I'm sorry! I'll never talk like that again, I'll do anything to make it up to you! I-I take hormone suppression pills, o-or... I don't know, take an abstinence pledge, just don't leave. Your my everything, my best friend-"

You've already left the alley when he looks up. A few game tokens lay scattered, meant for you but having been lost from his pockets during his beat down.

"No... you're supposed to be my player two..."

#yandere #yandere x reader #yandere best friend #yandere oc #yandere gamer #oc Lewis #yandere gamer friend #yandere boy #tw.yandere #yandere fanfiction #tw.dark content #yandere content #x reader #x reader smut #yandere smut #yancore #yandere fantasy

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hihello-pinky · 5 months

Text

varsity crush

atsumu miya x afab reader

some fluff, i guess

i originally wanted to write a full fic based on pixie labrador’s song (hence, the title) but somehow i ended up with this drabble. ALSO i know it’s a sapphic song but damn, the first time i listened to it and heard the lyrics about volleyball, haikyuu was my first thought

miya atsumu who has been your classmate since sixth grade; who you always only thought of as osamu’s loudmouth brother who once lent you his jacket when it was cold and you forgot to bring yours.

atsumu who was your partner for cleaning duty at seventh grade; who would almost always miss the task because he made it a habit to rush to the gym after last period.

atsumu who made your heart skip a beat when he passed you a note asking you to the eighth grade dance; who raises an eyebrow at your questioning look and says the note is from osamu.

atsumu who was your seatmate during ninth grade; who would distract you during class with the sound of his pen scraping against his notebook as he sketched volleyball plays.

atsumu who surprises you when he enters the classroom on the first day of tenth grade with his blonde hair; who you couldn’t stop looking at because his lightened hair made him more handsome.

atsumu who, one night, dropped by your grandpa’s convenience store looking for an onigiri; who told you as he reached the counter that he had a fight with osamu and he wanted to give it as a peace offering.

atsumu, who somehow made it a habit to drop by the convenience store after practice to buy energy drinks; who always buy one of those candies displayed at the counter and conveniently “forgets” them, sending you a quick message to just keep it.

atsumu who approached you after class one thursday afternoon in eleventh grade; who shared he needed help in his studies in order to stay in the volleyball club and asked you to tutor him.

atsumu who began sharing a table with you at lunch under the pretense of having more time to discuss about lessons but always made it a point to just talk about random stuff; who in time recruited his brother and suna to your lunch table.

atsumu who lovingly accepts gifts from his fans at your lunch table; who smiles so sweetly at the girls as it makes you inwardly frown, confusing yourself.

atsumu who, at the first month of twelfth grade, excitedly tells you he made captain as he walked you home; who grinned at you as he showed you his jersey and jacket with his last name.

atsumu who became much busier due to volleyball but would always somehow find time in his calendar to stay with you either in a coffee shop or library as you studied for college entrance exams; who would force you to take a break as he snatches the pen from your hand (my old captain, kita, would scold you!)

atsumu who gets surprised once you tell him you’re going with them to the nationals; who teases you for volunteering to cover for the school newspaper; who is actually secretly happy that you’re coming.

atsumu who gives you his jacket before their first game “in case you get cold”; who makes the girls beside you at the bleachers squeal when he smiles at your direction once he sees you wearing his jacket and cheering for him.

atsumu who lets you see his tears for the first time as you comfort him when inarizaki places second; who listens to your gentle voice as you sincerely tell him that you believe there are lots of greater opportunities for him in the future once he goes pro.

atsumu who passes you a note before class with prom? written in his messy handwriting; atsumu who receives a note from you saying is this from osamu again?; atsumu who bites back a smile as he passes back the note, so the bastard told you?; atsumu who doesn’t notice his ears reddening until suna points it out but he doesn’t care at all as he reads your note: yes, and yes i’ll go to prom with you.

atsumu who surprises you at prom because as athletic as he is, he sucks at slow dancing; atsumu who makes you blush as he tightens his hand around your waist as soon as you two finally find the rhythm; atsumu who leans to you closely and whispers in your ear how beautiful you are; atsumu who plants a soft kiss at the top of your head after you tell him to shut up and accidentally step on his shoes.

atsumu who runs to hug you at graduation, wrapping his strong arms around your smaller figure and lifting you in the air; who attends your class’ afterparty with you where you end up playing truth or dare.

atsumu who chokes on his drink as your bottle ends up on him and you ask him on when he plans to ask you out; who, after composing himself, gives you a cheesy smile and asks you to be his girlfriend; who blushes so hard, making osamu and suna laugh, when you say yes and kiss him on the cheek.

miya atsumu who you never thought would capture your heart; atsumu who somehow also fell for you; atsumu who you would be cheering on for the rest of your life.

it doesn’t matter whether you’re wearing his jacket or not; he already gave you his last name, anyway.

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capricorn-season · 1 year

Text

Homophobia in drag

When I was a young boy, I loved spending the night at my grandmother’s house. There, I could stay up as late as I wanted, and in the morning, there would always be Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast. But the best part was raiding the closet in her basement, which was full of the gowns she had worn in the 1960s and 1970s – frilly pink and purple confections made of lace, chiffon and silk. I would put them on and watch The Golden Girls, sophisticatedly sipping Coke from a wine glass.

When I was nine, my dad bought a video camera, a giant monstrosity that my siblings and I struggled to balance on our shoulders while we filmed home videos. Alone, I’d prop the camera on the coffee table and record myself modelling various outfits, explaining to the camera why this plaid shirt went with these cargo shorts, or why this teal Starter jacket complemented these acid-washed jeans so perfectly. I captured on camera the dance I had painstakingly choreographed to Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s ‘Good Vibrations’.

As a kid, I followed my two older sisters around like a shadow, mimicking their mannerisms – the way they tucked loose strands of hair behind their ears when they were concentrating on their maths homework; the way they jutted their hips whenever they were talking to cute boys. Like them, I was a naturally athletic kid. My favourite sport was lacrosse, but I much preferred to play with the girls instead of the boys. The boys were quick to push and shove, and they loved to whack each other with their aluminium sticks. Girls relied more on their speed, their reflexes and the skills they’d honed to keep the ball securely cradled in the shallow mesh of their wooden sticks.

I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian community – most people would call it a cult. From kindergarten to the sixth grade, I attended the community’s tiny school. Because enrollment was so low, there was no in-crowd, no separate cliques of jocks and geeks. In retrospect, I’m sure my classmates and especially my teachers noticed my gender-nonconformity – all of my home videos prove that it was glaring – but it went largely ignored. All that mattered was that we were good Christians, that we loved Jesus and evangelised God’s Word to as many people as possible. When I learned about homosexuals in Bible class, or about AIDS (which we were told God had created to punish homosexuals for their sins), I didn’t think for a moment that I was one of them. Sure, my first real crush, when I was 11, had been on a boy – Elijah Wood, an actor about my age whose performance in the 1994 B-movie, North, had captured my heart. But at the time, before sexual maturity, I mistook the longing I felt for Elijah with the more sanitised desire to simply keep his company and be his best friend. I indiscriminately absorbed all of the lessons I learned about homosexuals, as if they were and would always be irrelevant to my life.

The summer after my sixth-grade year, my family left the community and we moved to a neighbouring town. I began seventh grade in a large public school, where there was definitely an in-crowd. My new classmates wasted little time informing me how unacceptable it was for a boy like me to behave the way I did – the way I enunciated my s-words, the way I brushed my auburn hair, which I had highlighted the previous summer with Sun-In. They called me a faggot, delivered me notes that said everyone knew my ‘dirty little secret’. They asked me frequently, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’. Well, of course I was a boy, I would respond, trembling.

Meanwhile, I was beginning to sexually mature; I was soon developing crushes that inspired more than just a desire to keep a boy’s company. With horror, I realised that I might actually be what the kids were calling me – which, I knew in my bones, guaranteed me a tragically short life and a one-way ticket to hell. That, after all, was what the old form of homophobia entailed. Self-loathing.

To survive the onslaught, I defeminised myself. I lowered my voice, started wearing baggy jeans and sweatshirts, cut the highlights out of my hair, and replaced my Mariah Carey CDs with Nirvana. Soon, the fear and the anxiety became too much to bear, and the only refuge I found was in alcohol and drugs.

In high school, with each passing year, my drug use got worse. After graduation, I lasted one semester in college before dropping out. Two months later, at the age of 19, I had my first of several stays in a local psychiatric ward. I was delusional, addicted to drugs and suicidal.

It was during my second stay in the psychiatric ward that I was introduced to a 12-step programme, which was how I would eventually get sober in my early twenties. It was slow-going in the beginning of my sobriety to accept my homosexuality. I began to reconnect with the young boy I had once been, the boy whose interests expanded beyond what was typical for males. I experimented with bronzer and mascara, and got French manicures and pedicures.

Engaging in these behaviours felt liberating for a while, but eventually the novelty wore off. In fact, they started to feel performative. I realised I didn’t need those things to be my authentic self. My ideas, my voice, the way I treat other people – these are the things that make me the person I truly am.

In 2011, when I was 28, I fell in love with a man. The following year, I joined the fight for marriage equality. After we won that campaign, I knew I wanted to become a gay activist. I wanted to help create a world in which feminine boys and butch girls could exist peacefully in society. A world in which gender-nonconforming people were accepted as natural variations of their own sex. Minorities, sure, but real and valid nonetheless.

The trans question

In 2017, at the age of 33, I enrolled at Columbia University, New York to complete my undergraduate degree. There, I was shocked to discover how gay activism had evolved since marriage equality became the law of the land. The focus was now entirely on personal pronouns and on being ‘queer’. My classmates labelled me ‘cis’, short for cisgender. I didn’t even know what it meant. All I knew was that they called me ‘cis’ in the same cadence that the seventh graders had called me ‘fag’.

Soon, I learned about nonbinary identities, and that some people – many people – were literally arguing that sex, not gender, was a social construct. I met people who evangelised a denomination of transgenderism that I had never heard of, one that included people who had never been gender dysphoric and who had no desire to medically transition. I met straight people whose ‘trans / nonbinary’ identities seemed to be defined by their haircuts, outfits and inchoate politics. I met straight women with Grindr accounts, and listened to them complain about the ‘transphobic’ gay men who didn’t want to have sex with women.

All around me, it seemed, straight people were spontaneously identifying into my community and then policing our behaviours and customs. I began to think that this broadening of the ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ umbrella was giving a hell of a lot of people a free pass to express their homophobia.

At Columbia, I took classes on LGBT history, but much of that history was delivered through the lens of queer theory. Queer theorists appropriate French philosopher Michel Foucault’s ideas about the power of language in constructing reality. They argue that homosexuality didn’t exist prior to the late 19th century, when the word ‘homosexual’ first appeared in medical discourse. Queer theorists proselytise a liberation that supposedly results from challenging the concepts of empirical reality and ‘normativity’. But their converts instead often end up adrift in a sea of nihilism. Queer theory, which has become the predominant method of discussing and analysing gender and sexuality in universities, seemed to me to be more ideological than truthful.

In my classes on gender and sexuality in the Muslim world, however, I discovered something else, too. I learned about current medical practices in Iran, where gay sex is illegal and punishable by death, and where medical transition is subsidised by the state to ‘cure’ gays and lesbians who, the theocratic elite insists, are ‘normal’ people ‘trapped in the wrong bodies’. I privately drew parallels between the anti-gay laws and practices of Iran and what I saw developing in the West, but I convinced myself I was just being paranoid.

Then, I learned about what was happening to gender-nonconforming kids – that they were being prescribed off-label drugs to halt their natural development, so that they’d have time to decide if they were really transgender. If so, they would then be more successful at passing as the opposite sex in adulthood. Even worse, I learned that these practices were being touted by LGBT-rights organisations as ‘life-saving medical care’.

It felt like I was living in an episode of The Twilight Zone. How long were these kids supposed to remain on the blockers? And what happens in a few years, if they decide they’re not ‘truly trans’ after all, and all of their peers have surpassed them? Are they seriously supposed to commence puberty at 16 or 17 years of age? These questions rattled my brain for months, until I learned the actual statistics: nearly all children who are prescribed puberty blockers go on to receive cross-sex hormones. Blockers don’t give a kid time to think. They solidify him in a trans identity and sentence him to a lifetime of very expensive, experimental medicalisation.

I wondered how different these so-called trans kids were from the little boy I had been. Obviously, I grew up to be a gay man and not a transwoman. But how could gender clinicians tell the difference between a young boy expressing his homosexuality through gender nonconformity, and someone ‘born in the wrong body’? I decided to dig deeper into the real history of medical transition.

Medicalising homosexuality

What I learned validated all of my worst fears. I learned that for decades after their invention, synthetic ‘sex hormones’ were used by doctors and scientists who sought to ‘cure’ homosexuality, and by law enforcement to chemically castrate men convicted of committing homosexual acts.

I learned about actress and singer Christine Jorgensen, one of the first people in the US to become widely known for having ‘sex-reassignment’ surgery in the early 1950s. Jorgensen may now be celebrated by the modern ‘LGBTQIA+’ community as a trans icon, but he seemed more concerned with escaping his homosexuality, which he said was ‘deeply alien to my religious attitudes’. As Jorgensen put it, ‘I identified myself as female and consequently my interests in men were normal’.

I learned that of the first adolescents to be treated for gender dysphoria (or what was then called ‘gender identity disorder’) with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in the 1990s and early 2000s, the vast majority were homosexual. And I learned that these studies inform current ‘gender-affirming care’ practices.

Soon, I met detransitioned gay men who had sought an escape from internalised and external homophobia in a transgender identity. They continue to suffer severe post-surgical complications, years after their vaginoplasties.

I began to fear we had reached a point of no return a couple of years ago, during a conversation I had with a supposedly ‘progressive’ friend. I told her that, if I had been a young boy now, I likely would have been prescribed puberty blockers and gone on to medically transition. ‘And you don’t think you would’ve been happy as a transwoman?’, she asked me. Her question left me speechless. I couldn’t find the words to state the obvious: that I am a gay man, not a transwoman; that statistics tell me my medical transition may not have been successful; and that I would suffer severe medical complications. In any case, if I had transitioned, I wouldn’t be living an authentic life. After all, isn’t that what this is supposed to be about? Living authentically?

Sylvester, an androgynous disco icon of the 1970s and 1980s, was once asked what gay liberation meant to him. He answered, ‘I could be the queen that I really was without having a sex change or being on hormones’. Perhaps I belong in an earlier era, when newly liberated gays and lesbians rebelled against the medical and psychiatric experiments they had long been subjected to. Perhaps my early aspiration of expanding what it means to be a boy or a girl was nothing but a pipe dream. In Europe, there is hope that these medical experiments will cease, and that gay and lesbian adolescents will be spared from a lifetime of medicalisation. But in the US, nearly eight years after same-sex marriage became the law of the land, it is full-steam ahead with these homophobic practices.

For voicing my concerns about gender-affirming care for minors, I have been called a transphobic bigot. If that’s what speaking out against the medicalisation of homosexuality makes me, then so be it.

#gender critical #jk rowling #twitter #artículo

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babydollmarauders · 7 months

Text

MEDIA MANAGEMENT — JACK HUGHES (23-24 SZN PART 5)

au masterlist

notes: do i like this? idk. but it’s out.

y/ndevils00

liked by jackhughes, dawson1417, and 221,691 others

y/ndevils00 ALL HAIL SATAN! i mean— THE DEVILS!!

YOUR NEW JERSEY DEVILS ARE NOW 6-0 IN THE PRESEASON! STILL THE FINAL UNDEFEATED TEAM IN THE PRESEASON!

tonight we played a home game against the dirty dish rags, and WON 5-2!!

the normal roster played tonight, which means prudential center was finally not just a whore house, but a whore HOME 🫶

we kicked off with a power play goal from my sweet blonde swede, Jesper Bratt! with an assist from my personal devil, Jacky!

literally THIRTY-TWO SECONDS later, MY SMUSH GOT HIS FIRST GOAL OF THE PRESEASON! I COULDN’T BE PROUDER OF YOU, MY MUNCHKIN! I KNEW YOU COULD DO IT!

in second period, we got a power play goal from best friend number 1!!! you are a star in every way! shine your light, puppy!!

we also got a power play goal from the light of my life, the love of my heart, my uber hot and a lot less smart, boyfriend; JACK ‘BABYGIRL’ ROWDEN HUGHES!!! SO PROUD OF YOU, YOU SEXY DEVIL, YOU!

and to finish us off, in third period, we got a goal from the one, the only, CAPTAIN SWISS SLUT!! look at you go! sticking your tongue out, one game at a time!

p.s. can you guess who was able to talk her way into being allowed to bring her professional camera and take pics through the camera holes in the glass?

i’ll give you a hint! she’s super hot, super smart, loves nicknames, and has a degree in ‘annoying her boyfriend’!

tagged jesperbratt, lhughes_06, dawson1417, jackhughes, nicohischier

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john.marino97 i’m not featured?

y/ndevils00 do better

john.marino97 but i played good?

y/ndevils00 do. better.

john.marino97 @/dawson1417 translate?

dawson1417 she has my child hostage. i cannot translate.

john.marino97 @/dawson1417 your child?

dawson1417 …i’ve said too much

user74 omg PROFESSIONAL GRADE PHOTOS

jackhughes you are an odd duck, my love

y/ndevils00 why are you talking about trevor on MY post?

jackhughes why would you think i’m calling Z “my love”?

y/ndevils00 idk what y’all are into 🤷‍♀️

lhughes_06 thank you squish! but “munchkin”? you know i’m taller than you, right?

y/ndevils00 only physically

lhughes_06 i think that’s the only way that counts…

y/ndevils00 mentally? i could squash you. but i would never, because you’re my smush and ily

lhughes_06 mhm, i appreciate that

user62 where can i get a captain swiss slut? asking for a friend…

y/ndevils00 mine came from Bern! check there!

dawson1417 i’m a star 😊⭐️

y/ndevils00 YOU’RE A STAR!! AND YOU SHINE THE BRIGHTEST!!

dawson1417 and no do better?

y/ndevils00 no do better!! you did great!

john.marino97 i hate you both

y/ndevils00 @/john.marino97 you love us so much you could die

john.marino97 shut up 😒

jesperbratt i look good! 😄

y/ndevils00 you look like the sweet angel that you are!

nicohischier why do you always get me with my tongue out?

y/ndevils00 i have a sixth sense

nicohischier i thought your sixth sense was finding Jack when he’s on the ipad?

y/ndevils00 i have a seventh sense

nicohischier yeah, okay

user29 THE GOALIE TAPS

dougieham y/n, how do you feel that Jack wore a mouthguard tonight? 🎤

y/ndevils00 I FEEL GREAT! THE SUN IS SHINING, THE BIRDS ARE SINGING, THE FLOWERS ARE BLOOMING 🗣️

jackhughes you said you’d love me even without teeth 🤨

y/ndevils00 i don’t wanna test that theory

trevorzegras hot damn! my man is on fire! GO HUGHESY!

y/ndevils00 i’m gonna fly to anaheim and soak your pillow in vinegar

trevorzegras YOUR man is on fire!

y/ndevils00 that’s what i thought

#media management au!#media management series <3 #jack hughes #jack hughes x reader #jack hughes imagine #jack hughes blurb #jack hughes fic #nj devils #nhl fic #nhl imagine #faithlynn’s writings <3 #faithlynn’s insta edits <3

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incorrectbatfam · 1 year

Note

Do you have any angsty headcannons of Damian Wayne

Sometimes I wonder if he has any insecurities about being the youngest and the fact that he's fifth (sixth? seventh?) in a long line of batkids who have already done pretty much anything he can think of. Blowing up the League of Assassins? Tim did that. Starting a superhero team? Sure, Damian's done that, but it's kinda derivative of his siblings'. Dying? That's literally Jason's whole schtick. With older siblings, he's gonna invariably end up with some hand-me-downs and it's a lot harder to carve his own unique identity.

He's over the whole "blood son" thing, but he can't help but feel a little jealous when Bruce talks so fondly about the others' Robin days, meanwhile Damian is still referred to as "having potential" and needing to work on this or that. It's like when your siblings have a bunch of trophies and you know you're just as capable, but you haven't been given the chance.

As Robin, everything he did was measured up against his siblings. Dick stuck the landing better. Tim was more careful with evidence. Steph decoded the riddle faster. Jason could take on twice as many goons. Though Damian tries to do things his own way, Robin never feels like something that's fully his.

Even though the Waynes can buy ten of everything, he still ends up with some of his siblings' stuff—Dick's sweatshirt, Jason's books, Tim's old camera. Damian can try and pretend they belong to him, but then he comes across a scribble in the margins or an old picture of Young Justice and it's a reminder that he's still tethered to the people who came before him.

And maybe that's why he still picks fights and gives people a hard time. At his age, he'll do anything it takes to stand out so someone notices him, and being difficult accomplishes that. As an immediate result, he gains individuality by being known as the Demon Brat. And because he gets that instant gratification, he keeps doing it over and over.

It's no secret that he and Tim aren't always on good terms. I think part of it has to do with Tim being the next closest predecessor and Damian has an easier time picking him apart compared to facing off against Dick or Jason. Because of that, though, I think Tim would be the first to pick up on why Damian is this way.

Do they communicate about it? Mmm not yet. This is the most emotionally stunted family we're talking about, so instead of indulging Damian's behavior, Tim flat-out ignores it and it's one of those instances where ignoring works because Damian stops, at least with him.

But then he moves on to Steph, but her tolerance is way lower than Tim's and she lets Damian know that. She straight-up tells him, "Hey, quit being obnoxious. It works now because people are going easy on you, but one day someone's gonna screw you up and you won't have a Batman to run to."

He doesn't really believe her because 1) he was never one to care what strangers think about him and 2) getting the job done was more important than being liked to him.

Cut to school being back in session. Damian mainly keeps to himself—partly to lay low, partly because he never got along with other kids before and didn't see the point in trying again. His grades are stellar and for the first month or so, teachers praise him all around for being a model student.

But that eventually slows down as his straight-A's and thesis-sounding papers become routine—it's his norm, and teachers stop pointing it out as something remarkable.

And just like before: when being Robin stops working, be the Demon Brat.

He keeps his grades up, but the teachers start sending emails home about things like chewing gum and using his phone in class. Every time, Bruce just reminds him to behave.

One time Bruce offhandedly mentions how Jason was a well-behaved student and Damian can't help but think, "That's the point. I'm not Jason."

The emails pile up, now with new problems like extended bathroom breaks, breaking the dress code, and even one incident where he forged himself a note to get out of class early.

But the thing that lands him in detention is a snide comment to the wrong kid that spirals into a schoolyard brawl. And even though Damian pulls his punches, it still ends in bruises and a bloody nose, and it takes two teachers and the football coach to break it up.

And just his luck, Dick's in Bludhaven, Alfred has a doctor's appointment, Tim and Bruce are at a business meeting, and Jason wants to stay out of this, so guess who's there to pick him up at the end of the afternoon.

Steph doesn't beat around the bush. Her first response is, "What did I tell you?" And it pisses him off because she's right.

That evening, they go on a long drive where she eventually gets an explanation out of him. And she gets him, 100%. She tells him how she had big shoes to fill as Batgirl and how she always compared herself to Cass and Babs.

Then she says: "Robin isn't a personality you grow into or break out of. It's just a costume. Who you are underneath is who Robin becomes."

For good measure though, she goes to Bruce later like, "Hey, do you need a laxative? 'Cause you're so emotionally constipated that you forgot your son is his own person, not a work in progress or extension of someone else." Then she swipes his credit card and takes Damian to the arcade to make him feel better since he still has a week's worth of detention plus Alfred giving him double the chores.

After that, people will still occasionally slip up, but when Dick ruffles his hair and says they'll ace a mission "the Damian way," it's reason enough to believe that things are looking up.

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mysisters-bike · 8 months

Text

Eric Harris was not a psychopath.

I know, this is a controversial title. Allow me to explain. TL;DR SUMMARY AT END! And, before continuing, do not mistake my presentation for sympathy.

What inspired my professional research in the first place was the trope that Eric was a psychopath. This trope was, I believe, popularized by Dave Cullen's awful account of the events at Columbine. First of all, Dave Cullen is not a psychologist or mental health professional. Next, Dave Cullen's work has been referenced by professionals as if he were a psychologist.

You're probably wondering why some person posting on Tumblr feels more qualified to speak on this. My credentials: I am qualified to conduct research on humans, I have a BA in Psychology, and a Masters in Forensic Psychology. My chosen career path focuses on intervening on at-risk youth before they become school shooters. I chose to present my research in an accessible location and not hide it behind research journal pay walls.

The biggest takeaway I want you to get from this is that severe mental health diagnoses take away from the smaller warning signs we need to be paying attention to.

So, what was Eric's "problem?" His behavior is rooted in poor childhood socialization. We know this already. Eric moved around a lot as a child. Throughout his crucial developmental years, the family moved three times: Kindergarten through second grade at 2 schools in Ohio, then to Oscoda, Michigan. In Sixth grade, and a portion of seventh, he was in Plattsburgh, New York. The remainder of his middle school and high school years were completed in Littleton, Colorado.

Eric's high mobility is an explanation for his poor social skills. A study conducted by Robert T. Webb, PhD, Carsten B. Pederson, DrMedSc, and Pearl L.H. Mok, PhD (2017) supports this theory. They conducted research on over 1 million children in Europe and analyzed the psychosocial affects of "moving around a lot" in childhood. This sort of scenario is commonly seen in children of military families; Eric's dad was active-duty Air Force and is the reason they moved so much.

This research found the children who moved around more were at higher risk for: attempted suicide, successful suicide, and deviant behaviors. Violent offending spiked in those who had more mobility in mid to early adolescence. The study reported even higher risk for those who saw multiple moves in the same year, which is something Eric also experienced.

Barker and Berry (2009) found that children of active-duty military caregivers often experienced behavioral issues while their parent was deployed and excessively attached behavior when the parent returned. In a separate study conducted by Flake, Davis, Johnson, and Middleton (2009), children of deployed caregivers exceeded Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC) cut-off scores for high risk psychosocial morbidity. Meaning, these children had the highest possible likelihood for behavioral issues rooted in interpersonal starvation. This is a dangerous hot and cold game to play with adolescents that are still learning and understanding the meaning of attachment.

Forming connections and then quickly abandoning them could understandably create an inability to form deep, personal attachments with others. When he did form these connections, perhaps he clutched them a little too closely. These relationships may have been highly volatile if Eric feared he may leave them and lose their connection, just as he had experienced so many times before. The slightest movement may have triggered an aggressive response out of fear.

Eric’s inability to keep and maintain a friend group wasn’t his fault – he did not learn how to properly socialize as a child. Sure, he was friendly and polite, but those are surface-level traits. After breaking the ice, friends of Eric began finding that he was pushy, controlling, and even a bit callous.

While Eric was noted as kind and polite, he was often regarded as shy as well. This shyness may have been influenced by trouble with low self-esteem. In a journal entry dated 11/12/1998, Harris wrote, “Everyone is always making fun of me because of how I look, how fucking weak I am and shit…” (Note: Eric's surgery for pectus excavatum as well as being bow-legged)

We’ve gently and briefly begun the exploration of Eric's childhood and understand the ways in which it could have affected him, behaviorally. The sad truth is, however, there just isn’t more data to help us understand the intricacies of his upbringing. I believe it is incorrect to say he wasn’t met with love by his family.

I do believe, however, this was the case of a child who was gentle, sensitive, and whose personality required fragility and a compassionate parenting style. He was treated a bit more ruthlessly than he was able to withstand by being subjected to an authoritarian parenting style, which we will certainly unpack further in the coming research. I cannot imagine this was on purpose, but I do feel he was forced into being a tough, surface-level person that he was not capable of being. Truly, Eric was probably a very weak person.

IN THE END, ERIC REQUIRED CONTROL IN HIS RELATIONSHIPS. Because of his constant social upheaval, Eric fucking hated not having control. This is a common pattern in attachment styles; avoidant, anxious, ambivalent, etc. We crave control because, for so long, our lives were unpredictable.

Okay, what about his inflated ego? Eric's sense of self was greatly inflated in private, but in public, he was quiet, shy, and relatively unlikeable. He equated himself to a god -- a god of what? He was a master of nothing in real life. Eric's insecurity led him down a path in which he privately lived out his fantasy of being better than those around him.

The most important thing that gets overlooked and nullifies the idea he was a psychopath was the fact that he did feel. Evidenced in his journal:

He expresses that he doesn't want blame to fall on his friends or family. He also writes that he has no self-esteem, he wishes he was accepted more, mourns his relationship with his Dad ("I had a lot of fun at that gun show, I would have loved it if you were there Dad. We would have done some major bonding. Would have been great. Oh well."), he's upset about not having friends ("I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things. And no don’t fucking say “well that’s your fault” because it isn’t, you people had my phone #, and I asked and all, but no. no no no don’t let the weird looking Eric KID come along, ooh fucking nooo."), and is self-conscious of how he behaves ("why the fuck can’t I get any? I mean, I’m nice and considerate and all that shit, but nooooo. I think I try too hard.")

Lastly, the infamous scene from the Basement Tapes in which Eric is crying and says a tearful goodbye to his friends that he wishes he could have said goodbye to. Read more here, page 8.

Eric's journals are filled with anger, hate, and deplorable language. But in my opinion, he does not bear the mark of a psychopath.

TL;DR

Moving around a lot interrupted Eric's ability to socialize in childhood

As a child, Eric was likely sensitive and required a gentle parenting style and was instead met with an authoritarian style that focuses on obedience rather than nurturing

Eric's own words demonstrated his ability to feel emotion, remorse, and self-consciousness.

Eric's "inflated ego" was a show he put on in private because he wasn't accepted by his peers; it was a defense mechanism to protect himself

Overlooking small behavioral patterns in favor of severe conclusions forces us to miss the warning signs after it's too late. It’s hard to hear, but sometimes it doesn’t take that much for people to do horrible things to one another.

#eric harris #dylan klebold #columbine #tcc #true crime #psychology

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chronicrabbit · 2 years

Text

Steddie Headcanon:

So I’ve had the long-standing belief (like many) that Eddie fell for Steve first. Steve fell harder, but Eddie fell first, and I think it was over something that Steve wouldn’t even remember doing.

Picture it:

Eddie’s in seventh grade.

He was held back in sixth grade math, which is already enough to inspire the other kids to pick on him, certainly not helped by his unevenly growing buzz cut and his proclivity toward doodling DnD monsters on his skin in black marker.

Somebody breaks Eddie’s only pencil during class and Steve Harrington, a popular boy who’s never even spoken to him before, tells them off for it and gives Eddie one of his own with a small easy smile.

The eraser is basically gone and there are bite marks all along the yellow painted wood because Steve has a habit of chewing on it when he’s trying to concentrate, but Eddie appreciates it nonetheless.

Eddie thanks him and promises to give it back after class, and Steve just waves him off like:

“Keep it. I have more.”

And Eddie does keep it.

Because that’s the fundamental difference between the two of them:

Steve is a rich boy who’s parents are unhealthily obsessed with their precious image.

If Steve gets a tear in his Henley, a grass stain on his jeans, a small snag in the threads of one of his socks, his mother throws away the “ruined” article and buys him something new.

Nearly everything Steve owns is brand new, never worn more than a few times before it’s swept away from him and replaced.

All of his shirts are pressed and wrinkle free and have that fresh from the store smell. All of his jeans are stiff and solid, never having had the chance to conform to his body and soften from repeated wear.

The most comfortable things he owns are his gym uniform supplied by the school and his Nike sneakers he’d bought for himself.

As a result, he genuinely just doesn’t see the value in material objects.

One pencil makes absolutely no difference to him.

But to Eddie, it’s everything.

Eddie, who gets nearly all of his clothes secondhand aside from the band tees Wayne surprises him with every birthday, as is tradition.

Eddie, who has to treat all of his possessions with the utmost care so they last as long as possible.

Eddie, who knows that if he loses or breaks something, the money to replace it is either coming from him or from Wayne, and he desperately doesn’t want to burden Wayne any further than he feels he already is.

Eddie, who knows and deeply appreciates the value of the admittedly simple gesture, to the point where every single day after that he finds himself searching for the other boy in class, in the lunchroom, at recess, hoping to catch his eye for even just a moment.

He uses that stupid fucking pencil every single day.

He uses it until it’s basically a nub, impossible to sharpen or even hold, and even then, he can’t bring himself to throw it away, not even when sweet Steve becomes cold and distant King Steve “The Hair” Harrington.

He sews it into his battle vest behind a larger patch on the front. No one knows it’s there except for him.

Not until Steve runs his hand over the patch while they kiss in the back of his car and feels the bump there. He pulls back to ask him what it is, revelling in the way Eddie’s cheeks darken as he recounts the cheesy little memory.

“If I’d known lending you a pencil would get me here, I would’ve given you a million.”

“No need, big boy. It only took one.”

#I’m a weak man #please take this #do what you will with this information #it lives in my heart #steddie #steve x eddie #steveddie #steve harrington/eddie munson #stranger things fanfiction #steddie headcanon

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tookthe-405 · 1 month

Text

On our way

Flashback 1: We were younger…

(I wanted some more backstory I’m sorryyy)

DAILY CLICK 🇵🇸

DONATIONS 🍉

(Not so loserish)ellie x fem!reader

a/n: some fluffy flashback from when they were 14 to give some happiness :)

Max and Chloe coded!! (Just realised that wtf)

put my whole childhood homoromantic friendship into this 😪

RILEY MENTIONED!?? they did you dirty my love

c/w: compulsive heterosexuality?!(not much though), a chicken heart?😭, a bit of fighting (ofc!), jealousyyyy, panic attack (yes again)

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

(Reader and Ellie are 14)

(4 years ago)

Readers pov:

9/14

Whatever negative, people say about eighth grade, it's true. Eighth grade sucks. Seventh grade is manageable. Sixth grade? fine but Eighth grade was a new level you didn't know you had to go through. Few weeks in and its already a nightmare for you and all your friends. Thank god you found some.

When you got into middle school a few years ago, you and ellie managed to persuade joel to send ellie to the same school as you. Which wasn't a hard decision for him, because in a small town in Boston, he didn't have that many options.

But you didn't get into the same class, which was quite scary for you at first. Ellie, on the other hand, is good at talking to people, sometimes a bit too well, and then she says things that she should probably have kept to herself.

However, you had problems at the beginning of the 5th grade. The fear of being rejected by people you studied with for a years had haunted you.

Some of the classes were mixed together and you still remember how quickly you scanned the room, so you could find ellie to sit next to her, and unsurprised there were a few people around her laughing. You stood next the crowd, too shy to get Ellie's attention. She didn't notice you at all at first, but talked and laughed with the classmates around her.

That was the first time you felt afraid of losing her to people who are more In so many patterns. For a few seconds, you just stood there and watched her. Her easy-going but also attentive nature, which attracted people like the light a moth.

It was like magic.

She played with the feelings and laughter like water. Light in her hands, without meaning and purely out of feelings, but so careful. This was her stage, she was in her element, and you would always just sit in the audience, with an astonished and envious gaze.

But then she saw you and brought a gap through the crowd to show you that she had secured a free seat for you, with her backpack.

But today it is no longer the case. Eighth grade is a lot of shit, but you've finally made friends in the meantime. For a matter of fact, you're talking to one right now, but you're too engulfed in your thoughts.

"Hellooo you still there?"

Your body stiffens and you quickly turn away from the window, into the direction of Isabella .

"What?" you completely forgot that you are currently in biology and In the company of a friend… and that you still needed to finish a partner project.

Isabella giggles softly.

“You’re always doing that, what is your head thinking about?”

she playfully taps your forehead with her index finger. You grin slightly and wipe her finger out off your face.

“Nothing I’m okay”

“I Hope so because we Are supposed to dissect a chicken heart and not stare out the window”

A glance at the table and there is the chicken heart she’s talking about.

“Yeah no thank you” you say with a grimace that makes her laugh.

“It’s okay we can google the tasks at home, this is torture.” She sighs, puts the lid over the heart and takes of her gloves, you do the same nodding.

“So” she turns to you again with that curious grin of hers.

“What have you been daydreaming about the past few days?”

You let out a nervous laugh and wave your hand in the air.

"nothing what am I supposed to dream about, so…"

She raises her eyebrows reproachfully, she knows how you lie.

"You don't have to tell me, but is it a certain someone who starts with E?"

Your blood freezes with shock, but also respectful fear, of her alleged knowledge.

"what i don't know who you mean" Sweat forms on your palms and you quickly rub them together so that they don't Stupidly betraye you.

"I guess I hit the bull's eye, I knew you liked him?" Your forehead frown on its own and your stress sweat turn into anxiety sweat.

"Him?"

Isabella nods. "Eliza, you like him… Right"

The first two letter almost give you a heart attack but then you just frown at her.

she seems confused by your confusion, you turn around slow, as you are sitting in the first row, to stare at the boy in the last corner.

He just laughed and pressed the chicken heart into his sitting partner's face.

Ew.

Isabella doesn't seem to notice how disgusted you are, because she gives you a promising and excited look. Something pushes you to lie, you couldn't control it even if you tried.

"Yes, that's it" a sad smile on your face as you say the words.

Before she can react, the door is opened in a loud swing and ellie is standing in the doorway, grinning, behind her a few boys and girls.

"Hey" she gives you a warm smile that you knwo all to well, her arms resting on the table.

Then she looks up at Isabella emotionlessly.

"Isabella"

"Ellie" she replies dryly.

Yes, the two don't like each other very much. Then ellie's smile turned, quickly, sending it back to you.

"Aren’t you done yet?"

"No, young lady, they are not, and you knock before you come in" Ms. Perlow's voice booms through the room.

Any normal student would be scared, which justifies this woman is scary, but ellie isn’t sacred at all.

Grinning, she raises her arms in the air, as if she’s been caught stealing. A few children giggle at her gesture, but the older woman doesn't think it's so funny.

"Ellie, it's the same every time, you make a clown out of yourself for God's sake, leave this task to the boys"

Mrs. Perlow looks away for a moment to massage her temples with her thumbs and pointing fingers, which you felt a bit sorry for, she was soo old. Ellie of course doesn’t care.

She quickly rummages for something in her jacket pocket and nimbly presses a small piece of paper into your hand.

"Okay, till next time, Mrs. Perlow," she calls into the room before disappearing out the door.

"I hope not," the teacher murmurs audibly, however, and whispers break out again, in the classroom.

Your fingers try quickly and unevenly to open the note.

Meet me at the new dinner down the street, I’ve got news and please don’t bring Isabella along

- your favourite person ever

P.S your hair looks pretty :)

With each step, you tousle the autumn leaves on the ground. It was kind of fun though, so you didn't stop, the scurrying sound of the dead plants in your ear.

Ellie mentioned a new dinner, which you have already drove by once with joel. After a few weeks ago, you passed by the former tourist center, which was soon to be renovated into a dinner.

Ellie thought it was better right away, because there is no one who wants to look around here in a small town Beverly farms. The eastern side of Beverly wasn't really interesting, she was right, but you always thought the little town was cute.

Here is everything you need and you have the sea right in front of your nose.

As you walk down the street with your backpack on your back, you think about what Ellie must have meant by "ive got news".

Before you know it, you'll be standing in front of the new store. "Seth's dinner". It actually looks very cozy, the light inside seems warm and a few people have already become aware of the place.

It seems to you just in autumn, very hopeful? A new beginning that is going well, a small but beautiful change in this small town. When you open the door, the door snorts cold from the air, the pleasant air surrounds your face.

There also seems to be a bar, graceful bottles on the wall and behind the counter. But otherwise it seems to be a normal dinner. Greasy smell of fries, burgers and beacons in the air, but on the order table it is written (in beautiful handwriting) that there should also be donuts and pancakes in the morning. In the evening, the bar opens.

At the counter, an older man is eyeing you, who is drying a glass. You've never seen him before, and he looks spooky right away.

Your head turns in every direction until you see the waving hand of Ellie, who had held a seat across from her in a corner of the table. It looks a bit like the dinners in Joel's old movies.

With a loud noise, you drop your bag and sit down opposite her. You let out a tired sigh, but then you notice Ellie's excited look. You shrug your shoulders uninformed.

"What?"

"Wait, I want to order before I tell you"

Her legs were constantly wriggling with hustle and bustle and you can't help but smile a little. The waiter came to your table and you two ordered 2 fries.

"Okay, tell me now" you say

Something good releases in your chest, you suppress the distracting feeling before it could reach the surface. The sparkle on ellie's face made you nervous in various ways.

"Okay, but promise me you won't be angry, ok?"

Okay, so the bad nervous feelings won. You strain straighter, ready for whatever might come your way.

"How old are we ellie, you don't always have to say that, when you've done something"

Ellie laughs so bright, that sound that you appreciate so much every time, as if it gives you water just before you dry out.

"remember how We wanted to go fishing with Joel this weekend"

You shake your head.

"You wanted this, not me ellie"

"yes, anyway, and you know Riley, don't you? From my English course"

Your shoulders slumped, just as you were about to answer, your order arrived. The old man from the counter. You automatically avoid eye contact. As he quietly, almost like a ghost, puts down the plates in front of you, he stops abruptly and stares at ellie's legs.

"Can you stop fidgeting like that, it drives me crazy"

His voice is exactly how you imagined it, rough, a little hollow somehow and he sounds like he's been a smoker for 10 years.

Ellie looks after him with a pissed expression on her face and starts shaking her legs even more out of provocation.

"Whatever, Riley wanted to come this time and her parents allowed it, isn't that cool"

You're not as enraptured by the idea as Ellie is and you tap with the tips of your fingers, and an unpleasant feeling in your stomach, on the table a little rhythm.

Ellie's foot bumps against yours and you look up at her even before she grabs your hand.

"Now I understand what the old man means, it really makes you nervous" she Chuckles and you just feel her hand for a moment. It lightens yours gently, but not considerately, as physical contact is normal between you.

Or at least it should be. But her fingertips triggered a wave of heat that spread to your face like wildfire.

You quickly flinch back, worried that Ellie might feel your pulse, which beats very erratically. Your thoughts are circling around, unsure if the feeling is positive or negative. It feels… nice? Exciting and it's directly addictive, you feel your inner self wanting to reach for more, but an indecent anxiety accompanies you every time you allow yourself to think this far.

"so you don't like idea huh?"

Your head goes up. Shes the same as always, reddish hair, green eyes, those freckles… Ellie's own gaze has descended. You never wanted to see her like that. Now you nudge her under the table with your foot.

"No, I think it's a good idea" you lie straight to her face.

The well-known grin creeps back onto her face and she stuffs a french fries into her mouth.

Then she proudly told you how she was sent to the school principal almost twice, but also about how she got a B+ in math and how the subject gets way too much hate.

You tell her that it deserves even more hate and about the weird interection with Isabella.

Ellie choked on a french chip and coughed so hard that Seth almost kicked her out. She said that she would know if you liked someone and that Isabella shouldn’t think she could be more important to you, than she really is.

This gave you a tingling feeling, so that you almost completely forgot about riley

"I don't understand your anticipation about something like that" Confused, you watch Ellie excitedly digging her fishing stuff out of the rack.

After joel voluntarily took her with him a few times, it became a little tradition and she got her own fishing set, which she takes care of like a mother.

"I like fishing and I like to eat fish, it's a perfect fit."

You're leaning your shoulder against the door of the garage when she bumps her head under joel's workbench.

“Ow”

He can't stow boxes well and safely. But there isn't much space here either, the green pick up truck, tools and the bench on which he has already built the craziest things for ellie.

"I don't get it no, I don't like the hunt and the taste of fish very much"

You always feel like an unnecessary murderer,since you kill the beings and it doesn't give you anything.

Ellie grabs her personal spare fishing line and packs it into her fisherman's backpack.

"Then you can leave the fishes you catch to me… if you catch any at all" She grins at you challengingly.

"Hey!" You point your finger at her. "I'm not that bad."

“No, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of how bad I am either, I get it." She says and you can hear her fucking smile in her voice.

"whatever ellie, i don't like it and it’s not because I’m not good at it"

"Oh no its not that your not good at it, its that your terrible at it"

Annoyed, you roll your eyes, turn around and leave Ellie in the room, but you both have a grin on your mouths. In the kitchen, Joel waits in his typical fisherman's outfit at the dining table, with a magazien about horse races.

He actually just looks like a forester. "Hey little one you ready for the trip?"

You let yourself fall across from him, on the wood table , which Joel must have built and sanded himself.

In the beginning, you had a lot of trouble with him, he was older and taller than most of the fathers you knew.

He was also a bit old to be ellie's father. Which, in the end,turned out that he wasn't. Not exactly.

That's why he was a little colder to you at the beginning, to test you. What does it take you to leave ellie, how quickly can someone get rid of you.

He wanted to know so he could protect her from it.

That's what you're understanding today.

Ellie couldn't afford to lose any more people, and you'd be lying if you said you would have done it differently in his place.

Yes, he was a bit intimidating at first, but after a few months he softened.

Now ellie worries that he loves you more than her, but you know the truth. No one could get close to ellie, just like no one would ever get close to sarah. Probably not even Ellie herself.

You really wanted to know what name would use Ellie for the both of you?

The thought of a name, It scares you both. Because it was more than friendship yet less than- "hey you okay?"

Joel and ellie stare at you.

You nod quickly and look at the clock.

”Didn’t she wanted to be here already?" Your question was more directed towards Ellie.

Then the house bell rang and your hope falls deep and painful.

Ellie's face is starting to shine again, and even though that was one of your favorite pictures, it started to annoy you very quickly the last few days.

"Wait, I forgot my gloves," she dashed up the stairs with her huge hiking backpack and her much too loud shoes.

Her nimble footsteps could be heard throughout the house. Your gaze flicks back to a very concentrated joel, who twitches his head towards the door, to make it clear to you that you should get it.

You let out a little sigh and wander extra slowly to the door, maybe she left. She didn’t.

But You can't lie, riley was pretty. and nice. clever too. It annoyed you to the bone.

"hey"

You look at her for a moment and immediately notice the backpack and the fishing rod. God ellie will love her.

"Hey come in"

You politely open the door for her, before she enters the house she quickly takes off her shoes. Jesus, good manners too.

"Riley, Welcome, we'll leave as soon as this girl finds her gloves" he laughs in his typical raspy voice.

"Don't talk about me if when not in the room," Ellie yells down and Riley giggles. "Thank you for taking me with you this time, Mr. Miller.“

You didn't know Riley, but you can tell right away that she's very intelligent and that you understand Ellie liking for her.

As much as you try to cover it up.

Joel shakes his head. "You can call me Joel"

Riley nods briefly, and Ellie shoes can be heard whizzing down the stairs again. When she sees Riley, she freezes for a moment, even though she knew she would be here.

For a moment you wondered why she did that, but then you got it.

"Hey Riley"

"Hi Ellie"

The drive to the lake was 20 minutes. And they were the worst 20 minutes of your life. Ellie wanted to sit next to riley so bad she left the front seat to you. She never does that.

From the mirror you could see the two of them laughing, talking as if they have known each other for years.

For the first time, it seemed to you that ellie wanted to share her stage with someone. It's as if she's brought someone from the audience to the stage.

And that someone wasn't you.

You didn't say a word the whole way. Not a word.

When the bluish lake was visible trough the many trees, you wanted to drown in it. Now you still want that.

The weight of your backpack bends your back right now, and ellie and riley never looked happier.

"Have you ever fished before, riley?"

you ask the tall girl.

She nods. "My grandfather used to take me on his trips sometimes."

"So cool," Ellie murmurs.

You thought everything was shit in this place. The lake looks so unwelcoming in the fall, as if it is personally trying to tell you to just give it up.

The old wood of the jetty squeaks and slips because of the humid air and you doubt the stability of the old thing. Joel prepares a place where he can fish in peace and quiet, and gives you younger people the freedom to do it on their own.

As the youngest in the group, it doesn't help that you really are bad at fishing, but you should be able to do connect the purr and the fishing rod.

Actually, you only have to manage to connect a fishing line, the rest takes care of itself.

Too bad you're so bad to make this fucking knot.

and you really try, but it just doesn't work. After a while you get too uncomfortable that you can't do it and you drop your fishing rod loudly on the wood.

Riley looks at you confused.

Joel was back at the car searching for the bait that disgusts you so much that you’re always afraid that the worms are still alive.

Ellie looks at you and stops at your bright red face. You can't read her look, you can't understand so much about what's been going on with her over the last few weeks, maybe even months.

But maybe you’re the problem too.

"Can you help Joel for a moment, we'll come right away" Ellie jerks her head in Joel's direction, as she talks to Riley.

She doesn't give you one last look before she goes past you towards the car.

The freckled girl steps forward and picks up your fishing rod, in front of you while you stare into the air like a little child.

"Whatever is going on with you today, the fishing rod really didn't deserve that"

You look downs a bit again to meet her eyes.

"What's wrong with you Ellie?"

"With me? nothing at all… What is wrong with me?"

Her shoulders tense just a little bit, but you don't miss it.

"The only thing you're talking about is riley, the only one you want to impress is riley"

Ellie takes a few steps back for some reason and looks behind you, probably at joel and riley who are still looking for the fishing lure, out of respect.

"I don't know what you mean"

You let out a snort and look at her. “I don't know you like that and it's driving me crazy"

"Why? Why can't I change, what's your problem?"

You want to seek closeness, her hand in yours to make the emotional distance disappear, but she takes a step back again when you try it.

It makes sense that she doesn't want that right now, but it still hurts incredibly how she runs away from you.

"It's not about you changing, it's good that you do, I don't care about that, but not who you do it with, Ellie" you remark.

For a second, she seems so far away, as if worlds universes separate you. In some summers, ellie and joel visit their family in texas, or drive into town for a few days. The separated time is not pretty, but neither is it gruesome.

Cause you can’t wait for her to come back, and she's just as excited about it as you are.

But I’m this moment, right now, you feel more separate from her than ever before.

"It's not always about you, I'm not your-"

Both of you weren't sure how it happened, because all of a sudden she was in the water. You don't know if you pushed her or if she fell in because of her distance steps. But both would be your fault.

The sound the jetty makes, the platch of the water, the way she is so shocked as soon as her face reaches the surface.

With your hand in front on your mouth you watch as she stares at you indignantly. Thank god she can swim.

Her eyes and the light green of the lake, bite each other just a tiny bit. It almost seems to you as if it was so destined, ellie and the lake. And maybe that was the case, but not in autumn.

You can't imagine how cold the water is and her blue lips testify enough. But Ellie doesn't budge. For a few seconds, she just stares at you. Maybe so that she can picture it again later or to make you realize what you just done.

You two didn't have to check if joel and riley noticed, you can already hear the stomping footsteps.

"Im sorry I-" you turn around so fast that you get dizzy and you almost fall into the lake too , you run so fast down the jetty that Joel can't stop you.

You're not quite sure where you're going. It all looks the same anyway. A play of colours, of orange and yellow on the ground and in the crowns of the trees. The sounds of birds and the dead leaves in the air.

As soon as you don't feel your legs anymore, you stop.

Your lungs sound like they're about to give up on you, and you are about to hyperventilate. It feels like you're always running, if not physical, then emotional.

You run when you're awake, when you're asleep, when you're sitting, Whether that's on ellie‘s old couch or when you have dinner with your family. Something scares you and it's always in the back of your mind, no matter where you are or with whom.

All of a sudden, your chest feels too tight and your head too much, but the world feels too small. It's as if all the air in the world is evaporating in front of you, and you can't do anything but try to get some oxygen with every breath. Your arms rested on your knees, your head spinning and-

"Hey?"

Your eyes rush open so wide and fast it almost hurts.

Ellie's clothes are completely soaked, so is her hair and she shivers slightly. And she's standing in front of you? She’s wearing an fishing jacket, a thick one and a wet one, but she doesn’t care.

"Hey it's okay im sorry I shouldn't have said that" she says it so fast, your brain almost misses it.

she doesn't ask if she can touch you, even if a precaution wouldn't have hurt you. At first only your hand, she grabs it very carefully and her cold skin makes you twitch a bit.

After that, she holds your cheek in her other hand to make you look up. You could still feel the drops of water hours later.

"Come here its okay, I’m fine" She takes puts both of her arms around you and one hand rests on your head.

She literally presses you against her. Her hand gently caresses over your hair. You've shoved her into an ice-cold lake and she's holding you like you're gold. As if you weren't a monster - as if you mean something.

Like a lost piece of a puzzle, your own arms sling around her and you put your head into her shoulder.

You cry so often, and you know it. You know how overwhelming it is for you, for the people around you, maybe even annoying, but not for ellie.

The animals of the forest hardly bothered, even if it was like the whole forest when quiet for a short minute. But you might have imagined that too.

"I'm really sorry ellie"

Your breaking voice is very low, though she hears it anyway.

"I know everything is okay I’m fine, I’m sorry too"

Out of surprise, you stiffen for a moment.

"I dragged you out here and hardly spoke to you. You're only here because of me" she explains and You can’t deny that.

You were going to stay like this a little longer, but suddenly ellie's breath hitches.

"don’t fucking move"

Her words run like a cold down your spine and into your ear, all the way to your legs. You were prepared for something that would tear you apart from behind But not knowing what it was almost killed you by itself.

Her arms loosen and turned you around a little in the other direction. Her eyes are still directed forward, into the forest.

When you slowly turn around, theres only a… deer?

You suppress the urge to tease Ellie, expecting that a Serial killer with a pointed hook was standing behind you, but the beauty of the creature was already enough to shut you up. It's still a bit young, probably still baby.

The white dots reminded you of freckles, of ellie.

The same ellie who was still standing next to you, way too close. But by too close you mean “exactly close enough”. Just perfect.

The two of you watch as the animal sniffs around on the ground. Ellie's wet hand prushes yours just a little.

A daring, yet intentional invitation, which you immediately accept.

The deer looks up even though you didn't make a sound.

And it's hard for you to breathe, as well as blinking.

This moment, this gracious moment should last as long as possible. It seems to both of you as if it is looking right into your souls, your hand squeezes ellies even tighter.

"Do you have your phone with you?"

With her big eyes she is still watching the deer. You shake your head.

"That's fine. I think it wont leave us, just for a little while.

a/n: I tried to make it a little less angsty (I failed forgive me)

INTERACT W LINKS ABOVE!!!! 🍉🍉

anyways hope you liked it pls repost and like!!! Next chapter the road trip will start I promise 🤞 (no hate to Riley btw I love her but let’s be fr reader would be jealous)

@yourelliewillms @bready101 @liasxeatt @darkerstarsstuff @elliezato @macaroni676 @crxmxnzl-c0rpzes @lovelyxbaby @yalaysbee @moonchild184 @a-little-bit-of-everybody @gosomewjere

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respectthepetty · 3 months

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Cooking Crush Ep. 11 Cut Scenes

I've been reporting on the missing scenes from YouTube's version of Cooking Crush [first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth], so here's this week's!

Prem goes back to his house after making out with Ten in the school's kitchen and sees the basil outside of his house. He decides it's time to take it back to Chang Ma.

Chang Ma sees it outside of his restaurant with a note that states Prem is thankful for all the opportunities Chang Ma has given him, but he cannot accept them.

When Ten gets home from their make out session, he encounters his father who witnessed Ten asking to step into the competition live since he watched the show as it was airing.

His father is heated that Ten is still seeing Prem, to which Ten argues back that he has done everything his father has asked including going to distant places and bringing up his grades, so he will continue to see Prem because he wants to. The father tells Ten his need to win against his father is troubling and when he gets into actual trouble, not to run to him.

Y'all, this fight was gooood! Ten tells his dad this isn't about winning against his dad or even about his dad. This is about TEN, and he likes Prem. He ends the conversation with telling his father that there will be no trouble. Period.

Well, we know trouble happens. Dy and Samsee are on the couch watching the video and reading comments. Dy wants to respond with anger to all the comments, but Samsee tells him no since it would only cause more issues.

Prem is fretting at the table, when the other boyfriends show up to comfort their guys.

They are worried about Ten since he isn't answering their calls, but Ten finally calls Prem and goes over to Samsee's.

Ten goes to apologize to Chang Ma, but we see the conversation Chang Ma has with Prem in the unedited version (with Ten keeping a watchful eye on Chang Ma, as he should!). Chang Ma tells Prem the reason he liked Prem was because Prem is determined, but this competition might be too much. He finishes with telling Prem he'll respect whatever decision he makes.

And this was in both versions, but after seeing Chang Ma's speech, which was good, it makes it even more obvious why Ten is superior. Chang Ma framed the conversation to be about what he saw in Prem but that this might be overwhelming, yet Ten made the conversation specifically about Prem and what is within Prem, which is why he knew Prem could succeed. It's small and it could be just be the translation, but it's important that Chang Ma spoke about how he views Prem, while Ten reminded Prem who Prem is.

These boyfriends are amazing, and I don't give men compliments lightly.

Now which one does Pang have a crush on? Metha or Samsee?

#Cooking Crush #cooking crush the series #uncut version on wetv #episode 11 #I think I got them all #Pang could have a crush on all of them #and it would make sense #these are all good guys!

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cecilysass · 1 month

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Shine On (1/16)

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic

Chapter One: Vandy

Rawlins Middle School Rawlins, Wyoming February 3, 2015

“Vandy.” Louis slams into Jackson with the force of his entire body. It’s an affectionate body slam, but also hard enough for Jackson to lose his pencil and nearly his armful of books and binders. “Did you hear? I hope it’s true. It better be true.”

“What are you talking about?” Jackson bends over to pick up the pencil, trying not to get knocked over again by the continual current of students on their way to third period.

“The police came to shut the school down. We’re getting out of here, bro.”

Jackson looks up at his friend skeptically. “Louis, what are you talking about, seriously?”

“Second period we could see the police coming into the building.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m positive. And I heard it was because there was a bomb threat and they’re going to close school right after lunch.”

“If it was a bomb threat, they wouldn’t wait to close school,” Jackson points out. “They’d close it right away.”

“Maybe it’s not a for sure bomb threat,” Louis replies. He looks suddenly doubtful. “Fuck, it better be true. I haven’t finished my essay yet.”

“What did you plan to do if there wasn’t a bomb threat?” Jackson asks curiously.

“Hey Vandy.” Delia Rich suddenly appears next to Jackson, and he quickly straightens his posture. Delia is so pretty: brown hair, bangs, pink cheeks, round behind. “Did you hear about the girl in seventh grade?”

“No, I didn’t,” Jackson says. His tone is considerably more polite all of a sudden. “What about her?”

Delia leans toward him seriously and lowers her voice. “She killed her parents and herself and the police are here to question everyone.”

“Naw, the police are here for the bomb threat,” Louis says dismissively, shimmying to the side to avoid a group of loud and oblivious sixth grade girls walking past them.

“Who told you about that?” Jackson asks Delia, frowning.

“Hannah R. in 8C,” Delia says, shrugging. She seems to think of something else. “Oh, Vandy.” Her eyes widen and roll dramatically. “Did you study for algebra? Oh my god, it was awful.”

“Yeah.” Jackson nods, but he’s distracted, even from a conversation he would normally be thrilled to be having.

“I spent three hours last night on quadratic equations,” Delia says. “I’m not even exaggerating. I should have asked you for help.”

“Because he’s such a fucking nerd?” Louis adds helpfully.

“No, because he’s really good at helping with math,” Delia says to Jackson, bumping into him a little. “Can you quiz me before class?”

Over Delia’s shoulder, Louis begins to raise his eyebrows up and down significantly like a maniac. Jackson studiously ignores him.

“Yeah, but I, uh, gotta stop in there first,” Jackson says, gesturing vaguely behind her.

“Stop in where?” She looks around the hall.

“Restroom,” Jackson says, irrationally embarrassed.

“Oh, right.” Delia turns back around. “I’ll see you in a few minutes then?”

“Yeah,” Jackson says, attempting the most winning smile he can muster as she darts across the hall into the classroom.

Louis immediately shoves his shoulder. “What are you doing, dumbass? I thought you liked her.”

“I do,” Jackson says pathetically. “But I have to use the restroom. For real.”

“Jesus, you have absolutely no game.”

Jackson decides not to bring up his friend’s own unsuccessful record with girls. “I’ll talk to you later, Louis.” He begins to make a beeline for the boys’ room.

“Wait, are we playing GTA after school?” Louis calls as Jackson begins to walk away.

“Uh, no,” Jackson calls back. “I can’t today. My parents stayed home to meet the guy delivering our new washer and dryer.” Jackson’s mom hates Grand Theft Auto, so he can only play when she’s out of the house.

“You’re a loser,” Louis responds good-naturedly. “See you later.”

Jackson flees, weaving in and out between students hurrying to make it to class on time.

As soon as Jackson is inside the restroom, he heads directly for the third stall, the only one with a fully functioning lock on the door.

By some miracle, it’s unoccupied. Actually, the whole bathroom is empty. He hurries inside and fastens the latch as quickly as possible.

And then for a moment he stands there, clutching his books and trying to catch his breath. He stares at the back of the stall door. It is covered in scrawled “suck my dick” and “turrrn uuup” in black marker.

Jackson’s not sure why the news of the police coming to his school has him so worked up, but it does. He can still feel his heart racing. Every muscle in his body is tense.

Calm down. Calm down.

He places a hand on his chest and counts to four as he breathes in, then holds his breath for a count of seven, then breathes out. It’s a technique his therapist likes to recommend to him. He’s slightly skeptical that it really works, but he tries it anyway. When he’s getting worried or irrationally fearful, when his emotions start to betray him, he wants anything that will help.

After a minute, the bell rings. Now he’s officially late for algebra. And they’re having a test, one he’s prepared for.

He should leave this bathroom.

He should go to class right now, take his tardy gracefully, sit down, smile at Delia, get out his pencil, and take his test.

Still, he doesn’t move. He doesn’t even begin to move. Every instinct is telling him not to move.

Instead, he closes his eyes and empties his mind.

Hesitantly, he begins to push out cautious little tendrils to probe around him in the school. He doesn’t really want to do this, but something deep inside tells him it’s important. That he needs to.

People’s minds feel different, have different textures to them. Right now, as he shines into people, as he gently touches the minds closest around him with his own, he can tell that most of them are kids, his friends and classmates. Kids’ minds are usually sort of bright and loud and flashy, like commercials for kids’ cereals. Every once in a while there’s a kid mind that’s very sad, unusually sad, but even then it’s sad in stark, dramatic colors, clear and tragic and obvious. Kids don’t hide things well.

But he brushes against adult minds in the school, too: teachers, mainly. Adults’ inner lives are so much more complicated than kids’. Harder to get into. Some of them are complex and curlicued, like honeycombs, and others are like smooth stones you find on a riverbed. Some are like an animal carcass rotting, full of holes you don’t want to shine into too deep.

It’s because of adults’ minds that Jackson doesn’t like shining into people’s heads very much. He’d prefer to stay out of other people’s minds as much as possible.

He peeks into the teachers’ minds just enough to identify them, to see their memories: their own faces in the mirror, their classes back up at them, bored faces staring from desks. He’s not looking for a teacher, so he moves along quickly. He doesn’t want to see any of their secrets.

Finally he’s found something different: the front office, a group of minds clustered together, a cloud of anxiety shared among them. One of them he recognizes must be his principal, Mr. Werther – he can see in his memories speaking into the intercom for the morning announcements today. Mr. Werther is feeling very troubled about something right now. His thoughts are racing. He’s wondering what the right decision is. He’s wondering whether he will be blamed if something goes wrong. His mind feels like a soda bottle shook up, ready to burst.

Quickly, Jackson switches his shine to another mind in the group, someone calmer. This mind is sharper, metallic-feeling, and he realizes that it’s a police officer, someone in charge, someone named Davis. He pushes further into Davis’s mind, into his current consciousness, and he sees that Davis is trying to explain the situation to Mr. Werther, trying to assure him that everyone will be safe, trying to let him know that there is back-up waiting right outside the school. Davis doesn’t think Mr. Werther is very smart.

Dimly, Jackson is aware that he is tightening his grip on his books, his anxiety rising. Something is very wrong here. He feels it in Davis’s thoughts. He sees flashes of himself.

He prods the shine deeper into Davis’s mind, pushing back thin layers that seem a little like aluminum foil.

In Davis’s recent memory, there is an image of something horrible: a crime scene. Bodies, shot, a man and a woman. Lying on their kitchen floor in a pool of blood, their faces vacant. Davis stands over them, shaking his head, writing notes.

The bodies’ faces are familiar. They’re Jackson’s parents.

Jackson feels himself start to breathe faster.

As though seeing light behind a dirty window, he starts to see what Davis thinks happened.

He thinks Jackson shot his parents before he went to school that morning. Davis pictures it happening: Jackson, shouting, lifting a gun and shooting first his father and then his mother. Davis thinks he possibly has a gun on him now, at school. The police want to apprehend him safely, with no one being hurt.

“We need to consider him dangerous,” Davis’s voice is echoing through his thoughts. “But we can do this in a way that makes sure no one gets hurt.”

All at once Jackson opens his eyes, falling back into his own consciousness, feeling short of breath.

He realizes he’s trembling. Mom. His parents.

Are his parents really dead? How could they be? He saw them just this morning. His mom had reminded him about his therapy appointment tomorrow and his dad had told him to stop leaving lights on. He hadn’t kissed his mom good-bye. He had been in a hurry.

Jackson feels sick. Mom. Mommy.

It’s impossible. He doesn’t want to think about it. He wants his mom. He wants to throw up.

There is a crackling sound echoing through the bathroom, and then the sound of a tinny voice speaking over an intercom. “Students and teachers, please pardon the interruption. Jackson Van De Kamp in eighth grade, would you please come to the main office? Jackson Van De Kamp in eighth grade, come to the main office.”

Jackson tenses his whole body behind the door of the bathroom stall, ready to push through, an instinctive defensive maneuver.

They’re really going to try to arrest him, he realizes. They really think he killed his parents.

He feels panic rising in his stomach, seriously threatening to make him lose his breakfast. They think he’s a killer.

You don’t have to worry. Not you. You can protect yourself. Stay calm.

He closes his eyes again and carefully shifts the perception of all minds around him, giving himself a thirty foot perimeter of altered reality.

It’s a big effort for him — bigger than his usual modest experiments — but he doesn’t feel any headache. Maybe it’s the adrenaline.

Walking like he’s in a dream—like he’s in a nightmare, really—he cautiously steps out of the bathroom.

Anyone looking in the hall simply sees Louis.

Jackson, as Louis, walks down the hallways of his school at the same slow pace, so as not to attract attention. It’s an effort to keep the minds around him altered and his own posture casual and unassuming. He walks past classrooms, watching all around him with his peripheral vision and the little fingers of his mind. Louis, please don’t happen to come out in the hall to use the restroom at this exact moment. Please.

He heads towards the entrance of the school, which means passing the front office. As he approaches, he sees that now there is actually almost no one around the front office at all. That seems weird—usually there are tons of students and teachers congregating near it.

Just keep walking, he thinks. Hopefully you’ll be unnoticed.

As he’s stepping past the door, two policemen emerge, moving quickly.

“Where are you headed, son?” From a quick tap of his mind, Jackson recognizes this man as Davis, the officer apparently in charge.

“My mom’s car. Dentist appointment,” Jackson mutters.

Davis glances out the door, where there is fortunately a car in the parking lot that looks plausibly like a waiting parent. “All right, go quickly. Don’t hang around. We need all students out of this general vicinity.”

Davis waves him out, and Jackson eagerly follows in the direction of his gesture out the door.

The February temperature hits him like a slap in the face. Regretfully he realizes his good winter coat is in his locker, back inside the school.

He keeps walking casually down the steps of the school and down the driveway, already beginning to shiver uncontrollably.

When he gets to the road, out of easy eyesight of the school, he drops his books on the ground and begins to jog. The school is on a wind blown, gray, desolate-looking Wyoming road, with little traffic except for those coming to the school. He drops his Louis perception filter. There’s no one to see.

And after he does, he discovers to his surprise that he’s crying.

He has no idea where he’s going now.

He has a vague idea that he should get out of town—maybe to a big city, like Cheyenne or Denver—but he isn’t sure how to get there. He has no money. He could hitchhike, but the idea of hitchhiking scares him, which makes him feel ashamed.

It’s just he’s too familiar with the kinds of things that adults think about. And after all, someone just killed his parents.

Why did someone kill his parents? Who would do that? His parents never did anything to anyone. They weren’t drug dealers or thieves. They were Lutherans. His mom made casseroles, and his dad carved wooden ducks. They were cheerful, optimistic, the type of people to see the good in everyone. Sometimes Jackson felt like he didn’t have much in common with them— like they saw the world very differently from him— but he loved them. He could never have hurt them. And he hates to think of what they thought, in the moment they died.

He finds himself crying harder as he jogs. He shouldn’t do this now; it’s too cold for tears. He tries to wipe them off with the sleeve of his sweater. But it’s hard to stop crying once he’s started.

He tries to jog faster. Turns it into a run. Maybe this will snap him out of it, clear his head. He’s always been good at running. At the very least it will warm him up.

Just keep running, he tells himself. He smiles a little, because it reminds him of a line from one of his favorite movies when he was a kid, Finding Nemo. Just keep swimming. His mom would repeat the line to him as a joke when he was learning to swim.

He blinks back the tears again and runs harder.

He wonders if Louis will think he really did kill his parents. He wonders if Delia will. He wonders if the other kids at school will all talk about it: Jackson Van De Kamp, the psycho kid who shot his family and was planning on shooting up the school. If they will make up stories about why he was going to do it.

A car passes on the road, and he quickly slips a filter into the driver’s mind: he’s a nice old lady picking up trash along the side of the road.

When the car passes, he continues running and considers his options. He doesn’t have a phone. His parents were waiting until high school to get him one. Even if he did, he couldn’t use it now anyway—the police would track him.

Shelter is an immediate problem. There’s a Frontier Museum in downtown Rawlins. He wonders if he might go inside and find a place to hide overnight, at least until he has a better idea. But the museum costs money to get a ticket, and he doesn’t have money.

He could try to contact his Uncle Wyatt to see if he would help him. But what if Uncle Wyatt believes the story and thinks Jackson killed his parents? Uncle Wyatt has always found Jackson annoying, ever since Jackson threw that basketball into his flatscreen TV when he was six. He could very well decide to turn his nephew in.

Then there is his birth mom. Jackson wishes he could ask her. He thinks he’s seen her, once or twice, in his occasional visions that come in fast and bewildering flashes. At least he thinks it’s her. It’s a woman he has some very close connection to, a red-headed woman, who is always very sad. He wonders if she would help him. He likes to think she would. But that’s a childish fantasy, because he has no clue where to find her. He can’t reach out and try to shine every mind in the whole world to try to locate her. He needs to stick with practical ideas right now.

He’s been walking and running for three miles, the wind biting incessantly into his clothes, when he hears another car coming down the road. With the fingers of his mind, he reaches out towards the driver’s mind to tweak their perception.

But strangely, he finds he can’t. Something in the driver’s mind is pushing back, keeping a wall up so that Jackson can’t change what they see.

He feels a stab of panic. He didn’t know this was possible. He’s never seen this before. Some paranoid part of him wonders if this is the person who killed his parents.

The car is sleek and black, with mirrored windows. It slows down right next to him. Jackson looks wildly back and forth for somewhere to run and hide, just in case there is someone inside with a gun—but there is nothing around him but open land, no possible shelter for miles.

He finds himself doing nothing but standing there stupidly, an open target, his eyes widening as the window rolls down.

“Jackson Van De Kamp?” a female voice says.

“Yeah,” Jackson manages, his voice scarcely a whisper.

It’s a woman: a surprisingly young woman wearing mirrored sunglasses, her blondish hair pulled back in a ponytail. She doesn’t look like a killer. But Jackson knows very well that evil people don’t always look evil.

“It’s come to my attention that you might need some assistance.”

He can’t think of anything to do but bob his chin up and down in a nod.

“Why don’t you get in the car, and we’ll talk?”

It looks so warm inside. He has nowhere to go. She dangles the promise of information, something important he doesn’t know.

Still, some sense of self preservation keeps him from stepping forward. Desperately, he tries to noodle a shine into her mind, trying to see what she’s all about. But he can’t. It’s like it’s boarded up.

She smiles a little at him in a guarded way, not showing her teeth. He has the weirdest feeling that she knows exactly what he is trying to do.

“W-who are you?” he says hoarsely. “Do I know you?”

She sighs, as if she expected this. “If you get in the car, I promise I’ll explain, Jackson.”

He hesitates. Then, taking a deep breath, he starts to make his way toward the passenger door.

Really, what other choice does he have?

***

#xfiles fanfic #the x files #x files fanfic #fox mulder #dana scully #xf fanfic #jackson van de kamp #msr

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